


Cold Even in Summer

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [100]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternative Universe - Romantic Era, Big Lonely House on the Moors, Gothic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 16:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15562257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: They were left alone after dinner.





	Cold Even in Summer

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Romantic Era. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

They were left alone after dinner. Later, Will would wonder if that had been intentional on their hostess’s part, but in the moment, it took him a while to notice that everyone but himself and Dr. Lecter had slipped away from the drawing room and made their way up to bed.

The day had been a long one, one that had left him with sore muscles and an ache in his back and something approaching quiet in his head, a remarkable thing given the cacophony of Margot’s company, the half dozen sycophants who’d made the trek from the city to spend a long weekend up on the moors. He’d come up for a different reason, not to join a party so much as to escape one, and when he’d first arrived, he’d been put out that Margot had failed to mention that he was not to be her only houseguest. She had, though, put him in his favorite room, the one at the far end of the house. It was some distance from the other bedrooms and sat on a corner of the house with only the attic above and the disused library below and so it was usually quiet, even at times when the house itself seemed to be stuffed to the seams.

“They’ll be gone in a few days,” Margot had said to him, watching his face as he stepped over the threshold and caught sight of the others. He could only imagine his expression. He suspected it had been none too kind. But Margot was used to him, as used as another person could be, and she had said nothing of his rudeness but taken his arm and made him leave his bag for the servants as she swept him through the melee and up the stairs to his room.

“If I’d told you they’d be here,” she said in his ear as they climbed, “then we both know you wouldn’t have come.” She tucked his elbow against her body and squeezed. “And have I not always promised you that the house is open to you whenever you wish? You ask for so little, brother, that I could not give you reason to deny yourself.”

Will had resisted the urge, strong and sudden, to tuck his head against her breast and draw her arms around him, curl against her and shiver as he’d done when they were young. Instead, he kept his eyes fixed ahead and murmured: “Always my protector, aren’t you?”

Margot laughed. They reached the top of the stairs and she nudged him across the landing. “It is,” she said, “a hard habit to break. And someone has to look after you, don't they, you being so unwilling to do it yourself.”

She swept him down the hall towards his rooms and the rush of the past took him over: the smell of the drapes, the sink of the rugs, the clutch of the high walls. It had been 10 years since he’d lived in this house, their childhood home; and 10 more since he and his mother had first moved in, she in the cream of a bride’s second right and he with big, silent eyes and so much fear in his heart he’d been hardly able to swallow. But then as now, it had been Margot who had taken charge of him. She had scared him at first, his bright confident stepsister, and though they were near the same age, he had always felt like the younger, the uncertain chick nestled in his big sister’s shadow. In time, he had come to appreciate her forthrightness, her lovely, unyielding strength, the same qualities that drew would-be suitors and lankabout lady friends to her like summer moths to flame. She’d never stopped treating him as her responsibility, her creature to care for, even when her own father had died; at his funeral, downstairs in the front parlor, what Will remembered was that Margot had never let go of his hand, had kept all of her father’s friends from London and Leeds at bay. His mother had held court near the casket, her hands steady and her amethyst eyes dry; she’d given Will barely a glance, so involved had she been with her dead husband’s business partners and friends.

He hadn’t known then that she’d been keeping company with one of them before Margot’s father had died--a younger man just in from India, a fortune in his pocket and a handsome if untrustworthy face; hadn’t suspected either that she would remarry so quickly, within a year, and trek out to the east, leaving he and Margot in boarding schools behind.

But he had known when she embraced him, that morning she was to depart, that it would be the last time he’d see his mother, the last time he’d look up into that beautiful, familiar face and see how little she liked him, the vague disquiet that clouded her eyes.

“Be good now,” his mother had said to him as she stood, leaving a cloud of Parisienne perfume in her wake. “When Mr. Reynolds and I have settled, we’ll send for you at the holidays, hmm? Would you like that, darling?”

She knew he wouldn’t; Will hated to travel, hated being in a crush of people and places he didn’t already know. So he’d lied to the both of them when he’d murmured a polite acquiescence just loud enough for her to hear. And she’d smiled, the brittle one she saved for moments when emotion was required, emotions other than pleasure or greed or lust. The covetous looks she gave his new stepfather, Mr. Reynolds, looked even from afar far more believable than the pantomimes of affection she had always handed to him.

“Goodbye, Mother,” he’d said politely, as if she were someone he’d just been introduced to and not lived with his entire life.

Her hand on his cheek, cold even in summer. “Be good,” she repeated. “I’ll know if you’re not.”


End file.
